Dear
father and mother I will try and answer your most kind and welcome
letter that came to hand a few days ago. Sure was glad to hear from
you all once more. But was sorrowful to hear papa had a sprained
knee. I hope it is better by now. Well this leaves us all well but
the baby and she has got a sore arm, it has a rise in the wrist
joint and is pretty bad but it is getting better now.

This
letter was written by my g-grandmother Mary Etter Grimmitt-Quarles.
This is the only part of the letter I have, if she wrote more, the
other page(s) are missing. The baby she refers to is Clara Etter
Quarles. At the top of the letter is an outline of a small hand
( I am assumming she traced Clara's hand) and inside the hand it
reads "Three weeks and 3 days old. Clara Quarles". Clara
Etter was the second child born to Mary Etter and William Allen
Quarles. At the age of 6 weeks, she died. It was assumed that she
was bit by a spider.

Scanned
Copy of the Letter (It was written in pencil and did not scan
well, but you can see the hand she traced) The dark black mark that
you see in the left hand corner of the scanned letter, is a tiny
lock of little Clara's hair that is pinned to the letter. It looks
almost exactly the same color (A light golden brown) as my own hair
when I was a little girl. My mother used to say it looked like honey
and butter mixed together.